


asteriferous

by antistar_e (kaikamahine)



Category: Social Network (2010) RPF
Genre: Multi, Pregnancy, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 00:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Miss Stone?" says the ultrasound technician. "Can you sit up for a moment? You might want to see this."</p>
            </blockquote>





	asteriferous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salvadore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/gifts).



> So I had this big ole outline of a fic done up for [polybigbang](http://polybigbang.livejournal.com/), because Andrew/Jesse/Emma pregnancy!fic! In what universe is that NOT one of my most favorite things?
> 
> And then the rough draft due date came and went and I had approximately 0 words written.
> 
> This is a tiny fraction of that fic, but I'm just going to go ahead and post it, because I like what I have well enough.
> 
> Inspired by [this ficbit](http://markcat.tumblr.com/post/45738533933/saaalv-here-is-a-casual-reminder-that-you-are) by [salvadore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore). 
> 
> You can read this here or [@ LJ](http://antistar-e.livejournal.com/594576.html?format=light).

**asteriferous, adj.** \- bearing stars; being made of stars

 

-

 

So it turns out that the California king is not actually the world's largest bed, and Andrew will not fucking shut up about it.

If you take his word for it (and you really never should, like, for real, if Emma Stone's last words aren't "shit, dude, let's go for it," then they will probably be, "don't listen to Andrew,") then their entire lives so far have been a terrible lie. Is everything _else_ a lie? If the California king is _not_ the biggest king-sized bed, then what other grievous falsehoods have they been told? Is everything not bigger in Texas, either?

"What is it, then?" Emma pushes, because he's not really getting to the point. 

At her ear, the phone rings through to voicemail. She thumbs at the End Call button, pushes her hair back, and dips her phone against her mouth, the corner of her iPhone case hard on her bottom lip.

"It's called," and Andrew steps over her, crouching down. He spins his laptop around, balancing it precariously on his forearm. "An Alaska king."

She looks. "Shit," she goes. "There's a bed that's nine feet by nine feet?"

"Yeah, that's," and he frowns. "I've been doing metric for too long, I can't -- how big is that?"

"That's not a bed, that's a _room,"_ Emma says. "Who the hell needs a bed that big?"

"Who _doesn't_ need a bed that big?" he answers gleefully, rising out of his crouch with an audible crack in his knees. 

She's on her back on the kitchen floor; she doesn't really remember the chain of events that led to her being on her back on the kitchen floor, but here she is, the linoleum a little gritty under her bare shoulders because they haven't Swiffered yet this week, and her springtime skirt has long since ridden entirely up her thighs, her knees bumping into the cabinet with every idle swing. She hits redial, puts the phone back to her ear, and tells Andrew, "What would you do with it?"

" _Live_ on it," he says dreamily. He puts the laptop down on the counter. "I'd never leave."

"You'd get married on that bed," she extrapolates, and the look he gives her as he steps over her again is indescribably fond, because yeah, she'll run with his scenarios. "Raise children on that bed. Wouldn't you?"

"Hey, there are apartments in, like, Hong Kong or places like that that are about as big as that bed. They manage it. Say, did we drink up that pot of coffee?"

"Uh," and Emma glances towards the counter automatically, even though there's no way she could see anything from the floor. She doesn't remember if she's had any coffee this morning. She's probably had at least two cups, and forgot about them as soon as they were out of sight. Did she rinse out the pot? She remembers rinsing out the pot, but she doesn't know if that happened this morning or if her sense memory is tricking her into believing she did it this morning. "I think so?"

"Damn, I wasn't done." He chews at his bottom lip for a beat, before abruptly realizing he's an adult with options. "I'm going to make another pot."

"You do that," Emma says tolerantly, and then, just as he finishes shaking the beans into the coffee grinder, Jesse picks up the phone.

 

-

 

"I don't get it," he says.

Lunch is a curry from a sachet, one of those ten-minute fry up and mix with vegetable deals. Jesse'd arrived just as Andrew was tipping a row of chopped-up bell peppers into the pan, and the hot hiss of water meeting oil initially drowned out his knocking.

Emma forks a mouthful of chicken between her teeth and immediately hollows her cheeks, because it's still too hot. Like, temperature-hot, not spicy-hot. She refolds her legs under her on the loveseat, almost tipping her fork out of her bowl. They're all eating out of oriental soup bowls that, knowing Andrew, he'd most likely picked up at a flea market somewhere and kept, even though they were probably faux-Chinese replicas cheaply manufactured by an American company in factories on Chinese soil. They were the only clean bowls in the house at the moment, so here they are.

Andrew sits cross-legged on the carpet at their feet, his knees bent up to fit between Jesse's legs. Steam curls from the top of his bowl.

"I mean," Jesse continues quickly, trying not to offend. "Don't get me wrong, that's really awesome, you'll be great parents, but why make me come over just to tell me? Why not text me, or …" he trails off, his eyes darting towards the apartment window like he's watching the rest of his sentence escape out that way without him. "I don't know, tell me on the phone?" 

It's April, in case anyone wants to know.

She counts through the rest of the year, ticking fingers down against the side of the bowl. She's going to have a New Year's baby.

Will it be born at the turn of the year, she wonders, and have one of those birthdays that's always competing with the closest holiday? Will it be one of those birthdays that nobody's in school for, when everybody's on vacation? Will people think to get it two different presents, or will its birthday disappear into the dark suck of Christmas? 

Or will it be a middle of the month baby, a grey-skied, dead-of-winter baby?

"Because," she says, when Andrew volunteers nothing, leaving it up to her. She doesn't look at Jesse, but she can see all his angles in her peripheral, etch-a-sketched towards her. "We're pretty sure we know exactly when I got pregnant."

A pause.

"Oh," says Jesse, in a swooping fall of a sound like he'd been dropped from a very great height.

 

-

 

For days afterwards, Andrew just _vibrates_ at people, chock full of this news and unable to share it because there's no way in hell they're ready to share that. It shifts gravity, changes the way the Earth pulls on them, news like this; or maybe Emma's taking a very long time to freak out, that's entirely possible too.

So Andrew babbles at people a lot about the Alaska king, because that's important and exciting news he _can_ share, and Emma does the busy-work her publicist tells her to and then just finds herself stopping and thinking, _I am doing this and my body is growing a little person. Right now, while I'm doing this other thing. Cells are busy dividing on what will eventually be a baby! Who will then become a person, with, like, eyesight and hobbies and a Social Security number!_

And then she has to sit down for a little bit.

Jesse sends her a text message a little after noon that Saturday: it simply says, _Let me know if you need anything._

At the end of the month, she goes to a free clinic in another part of the city to pick up some pamphlets and also to ask a lot of questions, because oh my god, babies? Like, growing a baby is a little bit more complicated than taking care of a plant: Emma can keep a plant alive with marginal error, but a baby inside her body is another story entirely and she is second-guessing _everything._

The physician who patiently hands her a list of restricted foods, medicines, and activities and a prescription for prenatal vitamins also schedules her for an ultrasound appointment for the following week. Nothing in her demeanor alerts Emma that anything's strange about this. She won't know that it's not standard until later.

"Didn't you just go in for a doctor's appointment?" her publicist, Liam, says, scrunching his unibrow at her when she asks him to carve the time out of her day.

She quirks her mouth at him wryly and hedges around it, "Funny, how doctor's appointments sometimes need follow-up appointments."

The technician who pushes a probe into Emma's uncomfortably full bladder ("think of it like deep-sea sonar," she says cheerily, unfazed by Emma's grumbling about how much she's had to drink in the past thirty minutes. "We get clearer images in an aquatic environment,") has hair that's cut into layers, each one dyed a different shade of red; a light strawberry blonde on top, fading into an ashy, blackish red at the tips. Frameless glasses perch on the end of her nose.

Her first words to Emma had been, "Oh, man, I am so sorry that they killed you off in Spider-Man, that was unnecessary."

And Emma never tires of these kinds of encounters, so she'd replied, pretty gliby, "That's okay, Andrew gets to die in the next one," just to see her freak out a little bit.

And then, just as she's contemplating a conversational opener about dumb dad puns, the ultrasound technician says the one thing you never want an ultrasound technician to say:

"That's interesting." Then, "Miss Stone, can you sit up, please? You might want to see this."

Emma struggles up onto her elbows.

Her shirt wrinkles up by her ribs. The surface of her stomach is curved, just slightly, as subtle as a hill, and she doesn't know that's too early. Or it would be.

The tech swivels the screen to face her.

She points. "That bit? That bit that wobbles? That's a heartbeat. And _that,"_ she moves her pen up the screen. "Is a second heartbeat."

Emma's eyes jump. "And that?" she goes, white noise rising to a roar in between her ears, shock running hot down her spine and rising cold in her gut. She already knows the answer; on the screen, there's a constellation in her stomach.

"That," agrees the tech. "Is a third."

 

-

 

The setting sun touches yellow on every surface in the kitchen, from the dishes drying on the rack to the threads of the little ducklings embroidered into the hem of the dishtowel. The days are lengthening like a sleepy morning stretch. Emma crosses one ankle over the other.

When told, Andrew bursts into tears.

It's so baffling a response that Emma, about two minutes away from complete panic herself, mentally rain-checks in order to stare at him.

He folds to the floor, back banging against the cabinet doors. Jesse steps out of the way.

"Triplets?" he goes, as Andrew buries his face into his hands, sob-laughing simultaneously, and Jesse touches the top of his head in absentminded reassurance.

"Triplets," confirms Emma.

 

-  
fin


End file.
